The World Health Organization has launched its 2026 global emergency appeal to ensure that millions of people living in humanitarian crises and conflict settings can access essential health care. Building on its 2025 response, WHO and its partners supported 30 million people through emergency funding, delivering life-saving vaccinations to millions of children, enabling tens of millions of health consultations, supporting thousands of health facilities, and deploying mobile clinics to reach underserved populations.
For 2026, WHO is seeking nearly US$1 billion to respond to 36 health emergencies worldwide, including 14 classified as the most severe and complex. These emergencies include both sudden-onset disasters and protracted humanitarian crises where health systems are under extreme strain and needs remain acute.
The appeal comes amid mounting global pressures, including prolonged conflicts, the accelerating impacts of climate change, and recurring infectious disease outbreaks. At the same time, humanitarian financing has continued to decline, with global funding in 2025 falling below levels seen nearly a decade earlier. As a result, health actors were able to reach only a fraction of the people originally targeted for humanitarian health assistance, leaving millions without adequate care.
WHO leadership emphasized that the appeal represents a strategic investment in global health and security rather than charity. Access to health care in emergencies helps restore dignity, stabilize communities, and support recovery while reducing the risk that health crises escalate into wider humanitarian and security emergencies.
Priority response areas for 2026 include some of the world’s most fragile and conflict-affected settings, such as Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Myanmar, the occupied Palestinian territory, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, the Syrian Arab Republic, Ukraine, and Yemen, alongside responses to ongoing outbreaks of cholera and mpox. As the lead agency for health in humanitarian settings, WHO coordinates a global network of more than 1,500 partners across multiple crisis contexts, ensuring that national authorities and local organizations remain central to emergency response efforts.
International partners underscored the importance of predictable and flexible funding to enable rapid and effective responses when crises strike. Early investment allows health actors to keep essential facilities operational, deliver emergency medical supplies, prevent and contain outbreaks, restore routine immunization, and ensure access to sexual, reproductive, maternal, and child health services in fragile environments.
Despite difficult prioritization decisions caused by funding shortfalls, WHO stressed that the remaining interventions represent the most impactful life-saving activities. With adequate resources, the organization aims not only to sustain critical health services in the world’s most severe emergencies but also to help lay the groundwork for recovery, resilience, and longer-term stability for affected populations.
